Human Intelligence

Naomi Alderman returns with her series that explores the minds of the greatest thinkers in history. From political theorists to scientists to inventors, authors and artists. Our world is based on their ideas and innovations. How did they do their work, what did they struggle with, where did they find their dedication, creativity and inspiration?Against the wishes of her family, American dancer and choreographer Martha Graham pursued a career on the stage, touring the United States as a vaudeville star, even making it to Broadway. But the classic traditions of dance weren’t enough for her. She sought perfection – the perfect encapsulation of the human experience, in movement. Modernist ideals were changing artistic expression across mediums, and the Graham technique distilled those ideals for dance. Her visceral work catapulted her to fame. As her reputation grew she never stopped exploring, looking to everything from Greek myth to Jungian psychology for inspiration, pushing to explore the passions and pains of the human experience.Special thanks to Paul Jackson, Reader in Choreography and Dance at the University of Winchester and Choreography Instructor at the Central School of Ballet.Produced by BBC Studios in partnership with The Open University.Presenter: Naomi Alderman Executive Editor: Philip Sellars Production Co-ordinator: Amelia Paul Researchers: Harry Burton, Martha Owen and Victoria Brignell Mix Engineer: Nigel Appleton Series Producer: Anishka Sharma Production Manager: Jo Kyle

Naomi Alderman returns with her series that explores the minds of the greatest thinkers in history. From political theorists to scientists to inventors, authors and artists. Our world is based on their ideas and innovations. How did they do their work, what did they struggle with, where did they find their dedication, creativity and inspiration? In the early 9th century Baghdad was the centre of the world, and within Baghdad the Bayt al-Hikma – the House of Wisdom – was the centre of scholarship. And in that centre, the Al-Khawarizmi was working to revolutionise our understanding of mathematics. This revolution would be outlined in his book, Al-Jabr, from which we get the word algebra. While arithmetic and geometry date back to the ancient Greeks and Babylonians, Al-Khawarizmi sought to outline a recipe that could be applied to multiple situations. A formula that would unlock a greater understanding of calculation.In his own lifetime his impact was immense, from popularising the use of Hindu numerals, to large infrastructure projects. But his impact today is even greater. He laid the foundations on which we all walk.Special thanks to Jim Al-Khalili, professor of theoretical physics and chair in public engagement in science at the University of Surrey.Produced by BBC Studios in partnership with The Open University.Presenter: Naomi Alderman Executive Editor: Philip Sellars Production Co-ordinator: Amelia Paul Researchers: Harry Burton, Martha Owen and Victoria Brignell Mix Engineer: Nigel Appleton Series Producer: Anishka Sharma Production Manager: Jo Kyle

Naomi Alderman returns with her series that explores the minds of the greatest thinkers in history. From political theorists to scientists to inventors, authors and artists. Our world is based on their ideas and innovations. How did they do their work, what did they struggle with, where did they find their dedication, creativity and inspiration?A highly skilled engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel was driven by a desire to be the best, to achieve perfection in everything he built. From the Clifton Suspension Bridge to Paddington Station, Brunel’s work left indelible stamps on Britain. Unconcerned with cost and willing to put himself and his workers at risk to achieve his goals, his need for perfection perhaps went too far, by today’s standards. He had a vision for a future that, in his own time, seemed impossible: one where people could travel by smooth, comfortable, fast railways.Special thanks to Tim Bryan Brunel curator at the SS Great Britain in Bristol.Produced by BBC Studios in partnership with The Open University.Presenter: Naomi Alderman Executive Editor: Philip Sellars Production Co-Ordinator: Amelia Paul Researchers: Harry Burton, Martha Owen and Victoria Brignell Mix Engineer: Nigel Appleton Series Producer: Anishka Sharma Production Manager: Jo Kyle

Naomi Alderman returns with her series that explores the minds of the greatest thinkers in history. From political theorists to scientists to inventors, authors and artists. Our world is based on their ideas and innovations. How did they do their work, what did they struggle with, where did they find their dedication, creativity and inspiration?In a world that held few spaces for women, Sor Juana found her own. Born in 1648 near the town of Nepantla, she was the daughter of a Spanish coloniser and an indigenous mother. A woman of considerable intelligence, she yearned for a university education, but that was a privilege reserved for men.She learned all she could, and poured forth her learning in plays, in poetry, and in prose, exploring theological thought and questioning the hypocrisy of the male thinkers who claimed that, as a woman, she had no right to think at all. Special thanks to a Elisa Sampson Vera Tudela, reader in Latin American culture at King's College London.Produced by BBC Studios in partnership with The Open University.Presenter: Naomi Alderman Executive Editor: Philip Sellars Production Co-ordinator: Amelia Paul Researchers: Harry Burton, Martha Owen and Victoria Brignell Mix Engineer: Nigel Appleton Series Producer: Anishka Sharma Production Manager: Jo Kyle

Naomi Alderman returns with her series that explores the minds of the greatest thinkers in history. From political theorists to scientists to inventors, authors and artists. Our world is based on their ideas and innovations. How did they do their work, what did they struggle with, where did they find their dedication, creativity and inspiration?For Marie Curie, understanding was everything. It was her drive for understanding that saw her seeking an illegal education in Russian occupied Warsaw, attending classes held in apartments and shop rooms. And it was her drive for understanding that ultimately drove her into exile. Her legacy includes untold lives saved by radiation therapy; it is a legacy made possible by her unceasing need to explore and understand the world in which she lived. Special thanks to award-winning science writer and journalist, Dava Sobel.Produced by BBC Studios in partnership with The Open University.Presenter: Naomi Alderman Executive Editor: Philip Sellars Production Co-ordinator: Amelia Paul Researchers: Harry Burton, Martha Owen and Victoria Brignell Mix Engineer: Nigel Appleton Series Producer: Anishka Sharma Production Manager: Jo Kyle

As a prelude to a new season of Human Intelligence on Radio 4 Naomi Alderman took the brand on the road. It was a road that lead to the upper Wye valley where Naomi and her guests Professor Rosalind Crone and Dr Sian Williams were met with the warmth and enthusiasm of a Hay Literary Festival audience.The ambition was to add three more names to the Human Intelligence roster, all of them connected by their varyingly difficult childhoods.Ros Crone told the story of the prison reformer John Field who at a time of crisis in the running and governance of prisons in the 19th century advocated for teaching prisoners to read and write rather than continuing with traditional punishments, in the hope of rehabilitating prisoners. His most impressive work was done at Reading Gaol. All this came after a childhood blighted by Asthma, which saw him bedridden for long periods. During one of these episodes he picked up and became absorbed in a book by the penal reformer John Howard.Dr Sian Williams chose Anna Freud. The youngest child of Sigmund Freud and Bertha Bernays, Anna became a pioneer in the development of child psychoanalysis as distinct from adult therapy as well as setting up the famous Hampstead nurseries during the 2nd world war. Anna's early life was troubled by a difficult relationship with her mother. Just as she was starting to establish herself as a figure independent from her father, the Anschluss of Austria lead to her being arrested briefly by the Gestapo. It was enough to persuade the family to flee Vienna and settle in London.Naomi chose Epictetus, the Greek philosopher most associated with stoicism. Of all our thinkers, his was the toughest upbringing, being born into slavery at Hierapolis.As well as championing their Human Intelligence choices, this was also a chance Naomi and her panel to hear from the Hay audience. They were asked to respond to a simple question, where did they do their best and most creative thinking. It turns out that the processes leading to cleanliness are especially conducive to mental activity. As Michael Flanders once sang; 'I can see the one salvation of the poor old human race.... in the Bath.' It turns out the Hay audience were in agreement, although the shower was also popular.

Naomi Alderman looks at the mindset and legacy of Ida Pfeiffer, a woman who changed the very idea of travel, who is allowed to do it and why. Traditionally, travelling had always had a purpose – conquering, discovering, negotiating, pilgrimaging. Women were always accompanied by men – husbands, fathers, brothers, guardians. But in the mid-nineteenth century, a separated mother of two upped sticks and travelled twice around the world, all because she wanted to. Ida Pfeiffer went on bush expeditions with tiger hunters in India and had dinner with Queen Pomare IV of Tahiti. She spent her fiftieth birthday riding camels through Iran. So many people must have yearned for this kind of adventure, thought about it, but never turned the idea into reality. Pfeiffer made it happen. But what was so different about her thinking?Special thanks to John van Wyhe, historian of science at the National University of Singapore and author of Wanderlust: The Amazing Ida Pfeiffer, the First Female Tourist (National University of Singapore Press, 2020).Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.

Jean Rhys' sequel to Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea, changed the way we think about stories forever. Naomi Alderman meets a fellow novelist who put a marginalised character at the centre of the action. Rhys left Dominica to go to school in cold, grey England, but she had always felt out of place. A perfectionist who needed every word in just the right place, she took decades to publish her masterpiece. She was a thinker ahead of her time, who crammed the whole world and its injustices into her writing.Special thanks to Sophie Oliver, Senior Lecturer in Modernism at the University of Liverpool.Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.

Albert Einstein was an international pop star of science who urged the US government to build an atom bomb. Naomi Alderman gets into one of the most famous brains of all time.Einstein rewrote our understanding of universe. He imagined hitching a ride on a light beam and pursued his famous 'thought experiments' to remarkable ends. He was a man who never swam with the tide. Despite a lifelong commitment to pacifism, in 1939, Einstein signed a letter urging the US government to speed up work on the development of a nuclear bomb. Naomi finds out why.Special thanks to Janna Levin, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Barnard College of Columbia University.Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.Presenter: Naomi Alderman Executive editor: Philip Sellars Series producer: Sarah Goodman Script editor: Sara Joyner Researchers: Harry Burton and Miriam O'Byrne Production coordinator: Amelia Paul

Naomi Alderman dives into the amazing intellect of John von Neumann, physicist, mathematician, economist, computer scientist – a visionary who predicted the rise of artificial intelligence decades ahead of time.As a child, von Neumann could recite the telephone directory and crack jokes in Ancient Greek. He waltzed into the Manhattan Project and solved a problem that had frustrated other top scientists for months. His work on game theory underpins the modern world, from defence strategies to dating apps. But, for all his serious intellectual contributions, von Neumann was a party animal, who did his best thinking surrounded by people and noise.Special thanks to Ananyo Bhattacharya, chief science writer at the London Institute for Mathematical Sciences and author of The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann (Allen Lane, 2021).Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.

Naomi Alderman explores the multifaceted mind of J Robert Oppenheimer, scientific lead on the Manhattan Project, a vast, top secret scheme to build the world's first atomic bombs in World War II. The Project was a remarkable feat of human intellect with a real, devastating human cost. It required close cooperation between the US military and a group of world-leading scientists. In many ways, Oppenheimer was a puzzling candidate for the job. He was brilliant, but fuelled by self-loathing. A physicist, he was also a student of philosophy and mysticism, interested in left-wing radical politics. Oppenheimer built the bomb, but later called the weapon's industry "the devil's work". His legacy, like the Manhattan Project itself, is infinitely complex.Special thanks to Alex Wellerstein, historian of science at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, and author of The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age (HarperCollins, 2025).Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.

Samuel Johnson was living proof that a person can be extremely messy and disorganised but still do work of great worth. He compiled and almost single-handedly wrote an English dictionary that changed the language for good. ‘Dictionary Johnson’ established the spelling and meaning of many words; he looked at etymology; he poked fun and cracked jokes. He lived hand to mouth, writing for money, and helped establish the modern literary world.Special thanks to Judith Hawley, Professor of Eighteenth-Century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.

Naomi Alderman looks at the remarkable way Denis Diderot connected ideas and people. In 18th-century Paris, he edited one of the very first encyclopaedias: twenty-eight volumes with tens of thousands of articles on everything from the concept of liberty to cutting-edge medical research, the manufacture of silk stockings and a recipe for apricot jam. Diderot was the perfect man for the job – energised by veering from one subject to the next and undeterred by fierce opposition from the Church or even a government ban on the entire project. Special thanks to Kate Tunstall, Professor of French and Sir Lindsay Owen-Jones Fellow in Modern Languages at Worcester College, University of Oxford.Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.